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I am six. My babysitter’s son, who is five but a whole head taller than me, likes to show me his penis. He does it when his mother isn’t looking. One time when I tell him not to, he holds me down and puts penis on my arm. I bite his shoulder, hard. He starts crying, pulls up his pants and runs upstairs to tell his mother that I bit him. I’m too embarrassed to tell anyone about the penis part, so they all just think I bit him for no reason.

I get in trouble first at the babysitter’s house, then later at home.

The next time the babysitter’s son tries to show me his penis, I don’t fight back because I don’t want to get in trouble.

One day I tell the babysitter what her son does, she tells me that he’s just a little boy, he doesn’t know…

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I’ve lost my reading skills. You might say WHAT? How is that possible? You’ve written how MANY books and published HOW MANY books and you’ve lost said skills? Well, I have a theory…

I write because I enjoy it, my creative mind takes over and I can write, and write, and write. Yes, I re-read it to check for story line errors, add things, tweak things, and to keep within the story itself…but I don’t READ to ENJOY it.

I READ my authors books, which I DO enjoy or I wouldn’t be publishing them…in fact, I have a confession, I’ve gone back to reread their stories from time to time because, I have my favorites…shhhh.

However, I realized after all the hard work of writing and publishing, I haven’t just read for MY enjoyment in a LONG time. I lost my reading skills.

I have a lot of author friends, some of who have been kind enough to send me copies of their books (thank you by the way, it IS appreciated). However, I don’t think I’ve had the TIME to read them because I do work, and work HARD at my own stuff.

My girlfriend is an author and a lovely woman (she paid me to say that, NOT). I took a wee bit TOO long to read her first offering to the public. I was BUSY. It caused hurt feelings, and, each time I was asked, I felt a stubborn resistance to even FIND the time. Believe me, I FOUND the TIME.

That’s just it…TIME. Apparently, I do a lot of work that people aren’t aware of. They SEE me on social media ‘playing’ and don’t realize I’m posting in groups (thanks for Facebook Jail BTW), promoting, chatting with authors and sometimes even socializing with friends. Sometimes it’s just up in the background so people can get a hold of me if they need to. They just see me ON there ALL the time and assume…well, stop doing THAT.

I actually do read, A LOT! I really enjoy doing research, watching biographies, documentaries, and movies on a subject…but that is ‘work.’ Fortunately, I enjoy my work.

Yesterday, after finishing up one of my author’s books, formatting it, and sending it off to the beta readers, I read for FOUR glorious hours from one of ‘the other’ authors that I have collected for thirty years. She died two years ago, but her stories will live on gloriously. The really cool thing about it, although I’ve read her books numerous times, I didn’t remember everything so it was like reading it for the FIRST time, and yet, not. Her books have a familiar feel and the stories are just marvelous. When I grow up, I want to be just like her…

So, I realized…I haven’t been reading just for PLEASURE in a LONG time and I need these little breaks…they help inspire me, make me work so that I can get back to my GUILTY PLEASURES (stop, you dirty minded readers, you), which has always been, READING. Fortunately, I have many bookshelves full of potential targets that have nothing to do with my ‘work,’ but have everything to do with reading…

I’ll let you know if I find my reading skills…I know I left them around here SOMEWHERE….

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I have a standing joke with several of my friends where, when we become distracted, we say SQUIRREL or SHINY, or, if it’s really bad, SHINY SQUIRREL. You get the reference, squirrels are always easily distracted and if it’s shiny, it’s worse. Authors aren’t much different. So, I find this funny. I also find squirrels cute, as I didn’t have to deal with them trying to get in under our roof, building nests, being destructive when I grew up, my mother had some stories that made them seem like the pests they can be. They also tend to create havoc when bird feeders are involved.

I can stop and watch a video of a squirrel because I find them amusing, clever, and cute as hell…hence the ‘distraction’ when I’m trying to write.

Since my friends know of this quirk of mine, I get a lot of squirrel pictures or share them with a select few. I even went so far as to make the Shiny Squirrel, something several of them find funny or roll their eyes at.

Last fall, I went to visit my girlfriend who lent me their family cabin for a week so I could relax after traveling so much, be near enough for her to visit, and to get away from it all. It was beautiful and I posted pictures in my Facebook timeline before about the house I had to myself…or, as it turns out, not so to myself.

I tend to ‘hear’ things. I am told it’s because I’m sensitive to things beyond my knowledge (for now). Some of it is ghosts, my mother has let me know messages from beyond, and others who either live with me, reach out, or even haunt me. My cats are frequently seen in my house, definitely heard, and knock stuff around…the last one died before this last trip so the fact that these cats are gone means I’m hearing their ghosts…it’s annoying but I live with it. Just last week the one that I last put down sharpened her claws on my carpeted steps…she’s been gone since September. She really needs to stop acting like the living and move on…I’m told she won’t move on until I do from this house…that’s another story. (see how I get off track from a story…squirrel)

So, staying in this fairly remote (and beautiful) cabin, I heard the first night a rather high-pitched peeping noise. Turned out it was a plug in to keep mice at bay. I told my girlfriend about it and she said, unplug it. Then she seemed ‘obsessed’ about preventing an infestation of mice, involving her father in the whole thing, putting down a TON (and stinky, you can have TOO much of that ‘spring fresh’ scent) mass of dryer sheets to ‘keep them away’ and discourage their living in the house. She was rather overboard about it, and I didn’t think anything of it. I just thought she was concerned about me staying there, wanted my time pleasant, and mice are destructive. Turns out, there was another story to it that she just told me…FOUR MONTHS LATER.

She had been visiting me, we were sitting at the kitchen table chatting. My back was to the room, her valiant husky was on the floor…sleeping (the lazy thing) and, apparently, we had another guest that she didn’t quite tell me about…a squirrel.

Since my back was to the room she glanced beyond me, saw something out of the corner of her eye (I frequently see things like that when the ghosts are particularly active, but when I tell her, I can hear her mentally rolling her eyes). The something was a squirrel…in the cabin. It hopped to the steps, climbed them to the first landing, and then perused the room…looking at both my girlfriend and I, analyzing the threat of the sleeping, and lazy dog, and deciding we weren’t that much of a consideration as it continued on up the steps. When my girlfriend excused herself to make a phone call, I thought nothing of it. After all, we are both busy individuals. When she came back from the phone call (more than one I have now found out) was when we HAD to go shopping and pick up those dryer sheets to lay all over the cabin…as per her father’s ‘suggestion.’ Apparently, she had demanded that he come down and catch the thing. He told her he had TRIED over the years to no avail and to use the dryer sheets which they can’t stand the smell of. She next tried her sister, again demanding that she come down and catch the thing. She was told she had exterminators in there who had tried to catch the things…again, nothing. So, the stinky (and overwhelming) dryer sheets were apparently the answer.

I have now envisioned the possibility (because I’m creative like that) of waking up with a squirrel sitting on my chest, looking into my face, waiting for me to wake up…and my girlfriend, saying nothing, because she didn’t want to ‘scare’ the squirrel, and, of course, the dog doing nothing because she was too lazy and sleeping…

Anyway, that’s my squirrel story and I’m sticking to it (for now, until I can embellish some more) and I worry that my girlfriend kept the true parts of this story to herself for four months, feeling I might feel uncomfortable staying there with a rodent in residence, which, her father assured her, was probably up the chimney at that point. I did hear the patter of ‘little feet’ on the roof as I recall during my stay there…but contrarily, I also heard branches against the windows and those killer ‘ninja’ squirrels could have gotten me…and then, where the hell would I have been?

Hope you’ve enjoyed the latest ‘story’ as well as the one coming soon!

Joy Parker had the perfect childhood. Doted on by her parents, she couldn’t imagine her childhood any different. As a child and later a young adult, she’s ignored by her much older siblings, made to feel the outsider…until a tragedy occurs, altering her life in ways she couldn’t possibly have imagined.

The next few years of her life are vastly different from her parents’ hopes and dreams for her. Then suddenly, another life-altering event changes the course of her life and she must make decisions she never dreamt possible. Winning the largest lottery in Wisconsin history opens the flood gates of possibility and means Joy must again decide which direction to take with the rest of her life.

After Joy is stalked relentlessly by fortune hunters, reporters, and even her own siblings, she decides to fly away into a future that she never could have imagined, let alone planned….

What would you do if you won $341,726,178.10 after taxes? Come along for the ride as we discover what Joy Parker decides to do with it….

Yes, it happened. No, I’m not lamenting the fact that I am turning FIFTY! But NOT until 12:29 P.M. You see, I checked my BIRTH certificate and that’s the time they put down for when I entered this world. This really is a MILESTONE for someone who was not supposed to live to see her Thirty-Fifth birthday. I survived cancer that year despite the 4-5 month prognosis and I’m here to say, I MADE it. So, rather than lament the fact that this is a BIG birthday, I’m gonna go CELEBRATE it. Thank you to all who read my books, follow my blog, and are celebrating (in spirit) WITH me!

K’Anne Meinel is a Lesbian Fiction bestselling author with more than 92 published works including shorts, novellas, and novels. She is an American author born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin and raised in Oconomowoc. Upon early graduation from high school she went to a private college in Milwaukee and then moved to California for seventeen years before returning to the state. Many of her stories have Wisconsin in them as settings for her wonderful, realistic, and detailed backgrounds. Named the lesbian Danielle Steel of her time, K’Anne continues to write interesting stories in a variety of genres in both the lesbian and mainstream fiction categories. Her website is www.kannemeinel.com.